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Fear of the foreigner in Britain

With less than two weeks to go for elections in Britain, immigration remains the main battleground with voters consistently ticking it as the single most important issue.


Britain: immigration becomes an election issue.

One of the more enduring political myths of modern Britain has been the belief that the hostile public perception of immigrants is simply an invention of tabloid editors and far-right politicians feeding on the fears of a tiny minority of Little Englanders. The myth has endured because the British liberal elite needed to keep alive the illusion that its own values of tolerance and fair play were also those of other "decent" and "hard working" Britons.

But even myths need a friendly environment to survive and, with old-fashioned liberalism in retreat, the climate has changed so much that for the first time a Labour Prime Minister has been forced to acknowledge that concerns over immigration are rather more widely held than is assumed in the rarefied corridors of Westminster.

Tony Blair has not only accepted that there is a genuine "worry" over immigration but has followed it up with a set of tough anti-immigration proposals saying the Government is simply responding to public sentiment. Indeed such has been the tone of his Government's rhetoric on immigration and asylum in recent weeks that it has been accused of engaging in a "bidding war" with the Conservatives who have made it a key plank of their general election campaign.

With less than two weeks to go for elections, immigration remains the main battleground with voters consistently ticking it as the single most important issue. Just how strongly it is playing with the electorate can be judged from the fact that, so far, it has been the only "constant" in a series of otherwise volatile opinion polls.

According to a recent MORI/Observer poll, seven in 10 persons want either tougher immigration laws or immigration to be stopped altogether - way ahead of healthcare, terrorism and Iraq. Significantly, even among Labour supporters - regarded as traditionally more liberal - a surprising large number favour a more strict immigration regime with six out of 10 saying that rules need to be "tightened": an euphemism for pulling down the shutters.

Xenophobic reactions

Random interviews have turned up reactions that are plainly xenophobic with people saying that Britain is in danger of becoming a "Third World country" because of the influx of immigrants. A common reaction is that there are "simply too many of them" around - allegedly living off state benefits, destroying the British "way of life" and putting pressure on public services.

Observers are hard put to recall another general election campaign in recent memory that was so dominated by immigration and asylum. With mainstream parties openly using the language of the Right, the racist British National Party (BNP) has gleefully claimed that they are stealing its clothes.

Its leader, Nick Griffin, contesting a Labour-held seat on a platform of "voluntary" repatriation of immigrants, has rejected allegations of racism saying that others are "playing the same game." That a party, once shunned as a "fascist" grouping, has been able to win a string of local elections in the past four years and now feels sufficiently emboldened to contest more than 100 parliamentary seats is a measure of how radically the national mood has changed.

There are echoes here of what happened in India when "soft" Hindutva briefly became the dominant political theme after the Bharatiya Janata Party's initial electoral successes, and it became fashionable to claim that being pro-Hindutva did not necessarily mean being communal.

In much the same way, it is now "in" for a Briton to say, "I don't like immigrants but I'm not racist." There has been a breakdown of the broad liberal consensus that once obliged responsible opinion-makers and leaders not to exploit racially sensitive issues.

`Not playing the race card'

The Conservative leader, Michael Howard, denies he is playing the race card claiming that he is talking about the concerns of "real people ... whose voices are simply not heard." And, if opinion polls and reports even in the liberal media are any indication, Mr. Howard's claim does not seem to be wide off the mark. The Conservative Party's posters with the chatty strapline: "Are You Thinking What We're Thinking?" followed with the proposition "It's Not Racist to Impose Limits on Immigration" have been a big hit by all accounts.

As the two main parties - not to mention smaller groups such as the BNP, the United Kingdom Independence Party and Veritas - compete with each other to sound tough on immigration, saner voices have been effectively shut out. They have been accused of being "out of touch" with the people and labelled as "liberal fascists."

The charge against them is that they want to stop a debate on the issue and turn it into a "no-go area." But, in fact, far from being opposed to a debate, many liberals are prepared to acknowledge that there is perhaps an argument against a totally open-door policy on immigration. But their worry is that the way the debate is being conducted has racial overtones with suggestions that immigrants pose a threat to British "values."

More insidiously, it is being suggested, especially after 9/11, that there is a link between immigration and terrorism with people coming to Britain simply to seek a safe haven for their nefarious activities. The hype over the case of a failed Algerian asylum-seeker, Kamel Bourgass, who was convicted recently for terror-related offences has handed fresh ammunition to those who portray all immigrants and asylum-seekers as potential terrorists.

Mr. Howard has said that Bourgass was "one of the quarter of a million failed asylum-seekers living in Britain" - the subtext being that they may all be dangerous terrorists.

The suspicion of foreigners, especially of non-whites and more particularly of Muslims, has reached a point that, according to a Muslim doctor quoted in New Statesman, "if you walk into a shop wearing a winter coat people might be asking: he's looking a bit thick around the waist.

What's he carrying there?" The climate of suspicion for which immigrants blame the media and politicians is not confined to inner-city ghettoes. Apropos of the doctor's comment, the New Statesman survey noted: "This is not Bradford or Oldham (two predominantly Asian towns rocked by race riots four years ago), yet the number of attacks on Muslims is increasing. So is the atmosphere of suspicion."

Alarmed by the tone of the campaign, the Commission for Racial Equality has warned political parties against whipping up racial passions. Its chief, Trevor Phillips, has told them to "calm down" saying: "I don't like what I'm hearing." In an interview to The Times, he said: "I think it (the campaign) is becoming ugly and I think it is because people are having debates about perfectly legitimate subjects but maybe doing it in ways which create tensions ... We want politicians to calm down, take a step back and realise what their words - and the tone of their words - may do to people on the ground."

The British representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), Anne Dawson-Shepherd, has described what is going on as "thinly-disguised xenophobia and political opportunism," and urged political leaders to desist from it.

Immigrants vis-a-vis elections

So, where does it leave the immigrants vis-…-vis the elections? Well they have issued their own manifesto seeking a commitment from political parties to stop playing the race card, and calling for greater representation for non-white citizens in Parliament and the Government.

Lee Jasper of Operation Black Vote, which has initiated the move, believes that in the present climate of "racism and xenophobia" it is important to make politicians accountable and get them to sign up for what he calls "an agenda for justice." It is estimated that there are some 70 constituencies where the ethnic vote is crucial and an effective campaign can help minority groups push their concerns.

But in an essentially two-horse race, options are limited and in most cases immigrants will simply end up voting for the lesser "evil" (Labour) except in constituencies where they can support the Liberal Democrats without splitting the anti-Conservative vote.

However, immigration is not just an election issue and it is not going to go away even if the Conservatives are routed. The stark truth is that public opinion is hardening and although the BNP's claim that a "huge race bomb" is ticking away may be an exaggeration, being an immigrant in Britain is going to become increasingly tough in coming years. "Cool Britannia," anyone?

(Courtesy - 'The Hindu')

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